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Reliably Well brings you thoughtful conversations from those who are shaping the future of healthcare, focusing not just on the technical side of the industry, but on the human element, the stories, the struggles and triumphs of individuals who are driving change. Join us for candid discussions that highlight both the challenges and rewards of working in a field where humanity and healthcare intersect.

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I want to welcome everybody to Reliably Well. This is our kind of intro episode into this season of Reliably Well. We’re rebooting the series here, Dr. Abraham and I, to restart this podcast and talk again about a different aspect of Reliably Well and a different aspect of healthcare to look at. really the humanity of healthcare and the human side of those folks who work and interact with patients, work in healthcare. So Sumner, your thoughts on what we’re getting ourselves into this season. Yeah, for those that have listened before, welcome back. If this is your first time to be with us, we’re really glad that you’re here. We have really evaluated in a very
crowded podcast market. What would it look like for Relias Healthcare to have a podcast and what do we really want it to be about? And kind of the subtitle to the revamp podcast is bringing humanity to healthcare. And I think that all of the patients that we have the privilege to care for are people before their patients. All of our clinicians who were very fortunate to work with our people before their clinicians.
all the hospital administrators and partners that we have the opportunity to work alongside. They’re also people too. And so we really want to tell the stories of what make individuals a part of our organization or associated with our organization. What makes them people and what’s their story and how do they get to where they are with the opportunity to encourage our listeners, for our listeners to understand who our people are at Relias Healthcare.
So Dr. John, say this is probably something you don’t like to do, but tell me a little bit about who you are as a clinician at Relias Healthcare and then what makes you a human being. Yeah, I am. I don’t like to talk about my clinical role because I have found myself to be the locums clinician too much over the past five years. I, um,

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When I started out clinically, I wanted to have one job for my career at one hospital. After a couple of years, I transitioned to Tupelo and I was like, okay, this is the one job for the rest of my career. And that was for a while. And then as Relias began to grow and there was a need to kind of fill in where
we moved on to, that was okay. And then after the world turned upside down with the pandemic, there were a lot more holes to fill in. And that’s been really uncomfortable for a guy who wanted to work in one hospital for his entire career. So I think in January, I worked at seven different hospitals in the month of
December, January over the holidays. So that was really out of my comfort zone, I would say. So yeah, that side of it is different. But you do get to see, I say this a lot, you see one ED, you’ve seen one ED. So everyone operates differently. Everyone has a different flow to it. Emergencies or a minority really of white.
comes into an emergency room. so there is a different cadence to every community as to when things come in. So it is helpful to understand a little bit of that, get to know the teams that are there, and get to be able to, when you get on a scorecard, to say, I remember when I was there a few weeks ago. Gives you a little bit of that street cred.
to talk to folks. So it helps. It is helpful, even if it is uncomfortable. And we have to, when you’re in emergency medicine, I guess you have to get out of that comfort zone. That is not something that we can always be in our comfort zone. And outside of that, I tell people when I was in, before I had kids, when I was in medical school, when I was in college,

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When I was in, you know, before all of that, played golf. And when I was in residency, I played golf. And when I was in residency, I said, I’m going to buy a house on a golf course and going to play golf a couple of times a week. I did not know this about you. Yeah. And I bought a house on a golf course and I lived there for five or six years. And in those five or six years, I played golf five or six times. And so when I moved, I did not buy a house on a golf course.
because I saw the futility in that. So I had kids in residency and you know, when you have kids, you start to think differently about the four hours you can spend on a golf course. And again, I enjoyed golf when I was playing it and I probably should get back to playing it a bit more. at the time when my kids, especially were young, it seemed a bit selfish to go out.
for four hours plus the travel time to spend on Saturday there as opposed to doing something else. So I say a lot of times I used to be a golfer, but I haven’t been in quite some time. And when the pandemic hit, my oldest child was in cross country and track and their coach had to stop coaching.
so much from the pandemic, but because she just had her first child. And so there, wasn’t anybody else stepping up to do it. Not that I know anything about it, but I stepped up for her and the other kids. And so since then I have been the track and cross country coach and then have learned a little bit about the sports have, have enjoyed getting to, to learn a lot about the kids that are out there, especially being able to.
spend that time with my own kids. So that has been fun. I do like to read as we have book club as part of our DNA, our culture here at Relias that’s been something that’s been fun to employ. And I see the Relias library and your background there for us. But those are great for us to talk about and then use that language.

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as part of our shared language through the corporate group and be able to think on a similar level, similar wavelength when we’re trying to approach problems about taking ideas from a lot of folks who have attacked problems and figured things out. I do like sports, but I’m probably more of a glutton for disappointment because I root for my alma mater, Mississippi State.
And if they do anything, it is to build up expectation and then to disappoint regularly in my decades of rooting for them. So I understand how to be disappointed in sports, but I guess that’s the real essence of it. Be disappointed many, many times and always hope for that one golden.
moment that one that shining brilliance that that happens, you know, once in a lifetime when everything all the stars align, unless you’re like an Alabama fan or, you New England Patriots or something like that. That’s not real fandom. When you when you always win. I don’t think they really understand the true nature of of what sports is, which is much more the we build ourselves up for some great event. And then we have to face the
the reality of the world. That’s more what FANZ is. That’s what I am in a ton of focus on. four kids that I’m a dad to, husband of Leanna Deacon at my church and Bible class teacher regularly there as well.
And a co-host of the Reliably Well podcast as well, probably most importantly, right? So you all will be with myself and Dr. Johnsey. Dr. Johnsey very humbly left out the fact that he is the chief medical officer and founder of Relias Healthcare, which we’ll get into here in a little bit to make sure that everybody knows the context from which we’re speaking. I guess I kind of work in the backside of the house as a hospitalist in internal medicine.

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a trained physician, I consider it a privilege to have the opportunity to work for Dr. Johnsey at Reliance. I first met Joe December the 28th of 2019. And I remember calling kind of a peripheral colleague of both of ours and was asking them about some discernment vocationally. And the only advice I got was if you get the chance to work with Joe, you just say yes and blindly follow.
And so I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to meet Joe and Luke kind of right after Christmas time and have been with Relias since January of 2020. I like Joe and very thankful to be a husband to Sarah and a dad to three kids that certainly remind me of my humanity on a daily basis, but a joy to be with them. And Joe, how many hospitals are you privileged at?
right now. I think we have 22 contracts. I think at least 20 of them, 19 maybe that I have privileges at. I think it’s 19. So while Joe takes up the majority of the, he still is actively working clinically as emergency medicine doctor. I think I have facility privileges at 12 of our 13 HM sites, still and actively working clinically. I
Like Joe, am an avid reader and have been thankful for that to be fostered in the culture and fabric that is Relias. probably the most fun thing about this podcast is not only are you talking to an emergency medicine physician and a hospital medicine physician, but also sports fan rivals as I graduated from the school up North, as Joe would say, but the University of Mississippi. And so I like to remind.
Dr. John see that not all Ole Miss people are bad, right? They’re not all bad. You have certainly shown me the humanity of that fandom and shown me a great different side of those folks. And I really appreciate the friendship and opening my eyes to a different group of fans there.
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It’s certainly changed my perspective. And you are being too humble as well as you don’t mention the fact that you created the HM side of Relias because without you, without your presence and you joining Relias, there would not be an HM program. There would not be an ED OBS program. And so all of that.
side, which has grown tremendously since 2020 is because of your work and your presence on the team. So we’re both not showing our importance here on the team. That’s right. And we both have a large amount of resilience, probably due to both of our fandoms. A great way to develop resilience in healthcare is to cheer for a sub-part of the team.
But we will not be talking about that as probably the, I feel confident I can speak for Joe on this, that we both really care about people. And I think that’s something that Luke West, who’s our CEO and Dr. Johnsey both have been pretty absolute about since the founding of Relias Healthcare, that people are the most important thing. And that is our first passion as a company. Joe, I’d like for you to talk a little bit about
the origin story of Relias. Because I think that’s something we talk a lot about is as we have grown and been fortunate to grow, we can’t forget our people. We can’t forget about the human beings that work for us. And I think that is a little bit of the secret sauce as to what we do. So tell us a little bit about the origin of Relias. Yeah.
I can tell you that it started a long time ago and I won’t mention the company that I was working for, but one of the large contract medical groups. And I just remember that over Christmas, there’s often kind of appreciative gifts. I see them often own docs, Facebook groups and things like that on Doctors Day and the like, where the hospitals or the employment groups.

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Sometimes they’re good and sometimes they are, you know, talking about how negative they are. And this was, this was before such things were popular, but we had a very large group and a very large nursing group and a large ED and the group that I worked for had sent one, 10 of popcorn for, you know, more than a hundred nurses, more than
25 clinicians won 10 of popcorn for the holidays. I was just, you know, I personally was embarrassed that it was coming from the group that I was working for, that that was what you were sending. I was almost like, I wanted to hide it. I wanted to be like, you know, just don’t send anything if you’re going to send that. And, you know, there were other
things, know, contracts that would come out at really the 11th hour and the clinician didn’t even have time to review it with their attorney just to make sure that there’s not, you know, we don’t speak legalese. So being able to make sure that there’s that you’re comfortable with the language that’s in there, it’s almost submitted, you know, really late that you don’t have time to to get those things done. And so there are things like that that
that may not have been focused against the clinician, but they weren’t focused for the clinician. The clinician wasn’t thought of when those decisions were made. was other things that were driving those decisions. And so when Luke and I were talking about that, we were like, we’ve got to make sure that when we’re making those decisions, as innocuous as they may be, popcorn
for the holidays. We’ve got to think about it from the eyes of the clinician. What are they going to think about? What are they going to say? And we may wind up saying, look, we can’t do anything. The budget’s just not there. We’ll have to let them know it stinks and we’re sorry that we can’t do that. We can’t do what makes sense, what you want us to do in this situation.

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but we’re gonna make sure that we make that decision from your perspective or with your perspective included in there. And so that’s always been our driving forces to be thinking about them. A lot of times you hear healthcare companies talk about patients come first and while we certainly think that and we want our patients to always be held up in our focus and be important,
We need to make sure what we can control and what we can drive and we can’t connect with that patient. So we can connect with the clinician and we’re going to focus on them and keep them in the forefront and let them then take care of that patient. We’ll try and keep all the other distractions away from them so that they can focus on that patient. And that’s always been our driving force.
Sumner, I know that you had an interesting program director in your residency who made you guys focus on patients. And you’ve carried some of that language over, I think, when you’re coaching and teaching, mentoring some of the clinicians that you work with. I would love to hear you talk about that humanity focus. Yeah, I mean, it’s a tired quote that we’ve all heard all the time. It’s attributed to
all different kinds of people that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And I was very fortunate to have really fantastic clinicians, but even better people that would train me. And often in medicine, you’re taught to give a one-liner of a patient to kind of frame up the discussion. And often in medical school, you’re taught, this is a 67-year-old
Caucasian male with the past medical history of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was taught that you needed to know something about who the patient was as a person. And so the one liner actually should sound more like this is a 67 year old retired farmer and a grandfather who is really looking forward to his grandson’s graduation from high school.

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Framing the clinical encounter in that way brings this humanity to patients. There was a hard stop in our history and physical notes that we would write. We were trained on EPIC and there were these three dashes where you can’t sign the note until you complete this field. The field was to list the patient’s hobbies.
And the thought was taking care of patients in the hospital. Sometimes you will rotate off service and one of your colleagues will take over and the colleague could look and see, this patient liked Red Sox baseball. And so you can go in and talk to the patient about, I can’t believe the Red Sox lost to the Yankees again. Like how about those bats that the Yankees are using now, right? It totally changes the game because it allows the clinician to engage in the patient story and just that little
It might even be just a 30 second blip, but all of a sudden you’re able to take better care of the patients. one of my program directors colleagues would always say that the patient will always tell you the right answer if you know what questions to ask and you understand how to listen. And so I think that the thing that I’m excited about this podcast and the vision for it.
is as we want our clinicians to engage in the patient’s story, I think it is very on brand for the Relias culture for us to engage in our clinicians’ stories. And what are their hobbies? What keeps them up at night? How do they get to where they are? How do we prove that they’re human and not just a super clinician that’s almost like a robot? So I’m really excited about this vision and what we’re trying to explore here.
Yeah. so again, reliably well is bringing humanity to healthcare. It explores the intersection of healthcare and humanity. We’re going to feature conversations with reliance leaders, innovators and change makers who are making a lasting impact through personal stories, insights, and deep reflections. We aim to bring a human touch to the conversations around healthcare, its challenges, and the people who drive its future. And every episode.

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Joe and myself are gonna try to uncover the unique experience of our guests, of our clinicians and people that our organization interacts with. We’re gonna delve into their personal stories. We’re gonna talk about their professional journeys and the values that shaped their work in the healthcare space. Our mission is pretty simple. We wanna highlight the passion, the dedication, the perseverance that’s required to create a more connected, compassionate.
and effective healthcare system. We would ask you, as you’re listening to us, please subscribe to the show. We’d love to leave a review, follow us on social media, but we would love to hear from you. Are there some people we could talk to? Are there stories that we need to tell from this platform? So please reach out to us. It is reliablywell at ReliasHealthcare.com. We would love any suggestions, feedback. We’ve got thick skin.
And we’re also a little bit crazy and adventurous. So we’ll take you up on your request. That’s reliably well at ReliasHealthcare.com. Joe, any final thoughts before we close up this intro episode? Hey, it was great speaking with you today and I’m looking forward to future topics. I’m looking forward to get into a dig in deeper with some of our some of our own Relias folks and some of the folks from our partner sites and some other
movers and changers that we interact with. I think it’s really eye-opening, some folks that you know well and work with to dig into that human side of them and learn more about their story. As you said, it’s one thing to know a patient and know all of their clinical data. It’s another thing to know the story that makes them who they are. And that’s true with the fact that, I know
this doc is a really smart clinician. But now I also know that they’re just this amazing artist who does this type of woodworking over here that’s amazing. That’s a whole depth to them that changes what I think of them. And so I think this gonna be really fun and I’m looking forward to it.

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Yeah. And maybe we’ll also get to talk about books that we’re reading. You you’ll laugh at this, From time to time, I will have to use Dr. Johnsey’s office for a phone call or something at the corporate office. And he’s got, he’s always got books out. And so from time to time, I’ll see one on his desk and I’ll go to Amazon and order it real quick. So my wife gives me a hard time that we have a new item on in our budget for books that Sumner wants because Joe has read. so.
Maybe we’ll talk a little bit about that too. But we’re to have a variety of guests and kind of dig into their story. And we want you, our listeners, to be inspired and probably more importantly, encouraged by the stories that you hear. So thanks for coming back and we look forward to helping bring humanity to healthcare. Thanks, Joe. See you.

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Thank you for joining us on Reliably Well, where we explore the intersection of healthcare and humanity. We hope these conversations inspire you to see the people behind the policies, the passion behind the practice, and the purpose that drives innovation in healthcare. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast. Your support helps us to continue sharing these important stories.
For more insights and updates about what we’re up to at Relias, visit us at ReliasHealthcare.com and follow us on your favorite podcasting platform. And if you have any stories that help to demonstrate the humanity in healthcare, please let us know at reliablywell at ReliasHealthcare.com. We look forward to hearing from you and telling your story. Until next time, stay well, stay inspired, and keep bringing humanity to healthcare.